


Saint-Just

by Mephistophelia



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Angst and Feels, Brothels, Canon Era, Everyone is terrible at feelings, M/M, One-Sided Enjolras/Grantaire, POV Grantaire, Pining, Prostitution, This is my garbage headcanon and I will defend it to the death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-12
Updated: 2017-12-12
Packaged: 2019-02-13 19:18:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,534
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12990786
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mephistophelia/pseuds/Mephistophelia
Summary: Grantaire, drunk and jubilant, saunters into a brothel just after midnight.Enjolras, broke and exhausted, knows it isn't his place to argue with clients.They are both in for something of a shock.





	Saint-Just

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is really just an excuse for me to combine my two favorite things: repressed emotions and strained-to-the-breaking-point French Revolution analogies.
> 
> Comments are always appreciated, even if it's just to say "why do you only write sad pining stories, you weirdo."

M. Lefevre's house wasn't the closest one to the Quartier Latin, nor the most elegant. Tucked discreetly off the Rue Lepic, the shabby, secluded building looked more like a bourgeois hotel than a brothel. Nevertheless, both the rats and the law generally gave M. Lefevre's establishment a wide berth.

Which, frankly, was quite enough for Grantaire.

The February air felt pleasingly bracing as he cut a weaving path through Pigalle's dirty streets, riding high after a rich meal and half a bottle of brandy. His equilibrium was something worse for the wear, but it would take more than that to damage Grantaire's mood. It wasn't every day he sold two paintings to a tourist from Chartreuse for five times their worth. That sort of fortune was worth celebrating.

He had a particular sort of celebration in mind, fueled by the ten francs warming the pocket of his worn yellow waistcoat. A celebration only a particular orientation of brothel could facilitate. For all its shortcomings in terms of ambiance, M. Lefevre's was just the type.

There was something noble in it, he supposed, whistling the opening bars of "Ça Ira" as he approached the door. Sharing his riches with the needy young men of Paris. His friends might even consider it a revolutionary act. Redistribution of wealth.

Or something.

What would they say, if he brought it up tomorrow at the Musain? Most of them would take it in stride. Bahorel's favorite pastime was swallowing a wild narrative and half a bottle of wine in one go, and Prouvaire and Courfeyrac were too in love with the idea of love to give half a damn about gender. Bossuet would merely raise his eyebrows toward his bald pate and remark, in his good-natured way, that Grantaire was possibly the only man unluckier than himself, at least in love.

Enjolras, though. He was different.

Enjolras always was.

Had Grantaire dared to recount his adventures picking up a male prostitute in front of that fine marble profile, Enjolras would have viciously feigned deafness, turning the pages of his omnipresent Rousseau louder than pages had ever been turned before. Paying the subject as much attention as an eagle might a spider.

Grantaire shook his head, ashamed of his own shame. Perhaps it was wiser to simply recount the adventure to Marius in private. Scandalizing Marius was half the reason he did anything, after all.

Without knocking, Grantaire opened the blue-painted door and strode inside.

He'd barely taken three steps into the dim, smoky hall—taken in the peeling yellow wallpaper, the scuffed floors—before a man appeared through a side door, brusquely checking a pocketwatch. Too broad for his straining waistcoat, the man had enormous gray whiskers and small, dark eyes that always put Grantaire in mind of a wild boar. Noticing his visitor, the man graced Grantaire with a yellowing smile.

"Monsieur. Welcome." His Breton accent landed like a battleaxe. "Always a pleasure."

"M. Lefevre," Grantaire said. "Believe me, I intend the pleasure to be mine."

Grantaire doubted Lefevre found the joke funny, if indeed he understood it, but the man chuckled obligingly. "I can get you the usual, monsieur, if you'd like," he said, nodding toward the door. "Or something different?"

"I'm open to recommendations." Grantaire patted his waistcoat pocket. The money clinked audibly through the cloth.

Lefevre's ears perked up like a hound. "Quite right," he said, and beckoned Grantaire into the parlor.

High-ceilinged and drafty, the parlor looked as if it had been pieced together by a hundred different people over a hundred years. Mismatched chairs and misfit furniture slouched against the unpapered walls, with two lamps casting dingy light from either corner. The room's occupants seemed every bit as flung-together as the decor. Six or seven men, though Grantaire knew at least ten others haunted the premises—probably working now, upstairs or down the hall.

None much older than Grantaire, Lefevre's boys had little else in common. Some handsome, others handsome only after a drink or five. Some with brows wearily lowered, some shivering in too-thin clothes, three laughing too loudly, passing a cheap bottle of wine from hand to hand.

All waiting, he knew, for work.

One of them, who had been engaged in a careless game of cards, looked up at Grantaire's entrance and winked. A fair-haired, provincial-looking boy with hazel eyes and a thin scar splitting his left eyebrow. Sébastian—or, in Lefevre's terms, _the usual._ Not the most compelling specimen in Paris, perhaps, but there was something to be said for familiarity. Particularly if you wanted someone who could get you in and out, satisfied, in seven minutes or less.

But this evening called for indulgence, not efficiency.

Grantaire trailed his gaze across the other men without much interest, lingering nowhere long. He toyed with the idea of an olive-skinned man near the chimneypiece—striking profile, pity about the eyebrows _—_ but spotted a painful-looking sore at the corner of the man's mouth. The pox, for certain. Grantaire grimaced.

Well, Sébastian, he thought. Maybe we'll go another round together after all, you and I.

Not quite willing to throw out hope, Grantaire glanced back to the corner nearest the door. A tall broomstick of a man with an absurd winged mustache—no. A redhead who was clearly not yet sixteen—not today, Satan. A blonde with his arms folded, leaning his back against the windowpane—

Wait.

No.

It  _wasn't._

It absolutely was.

Dirty-blonde hair in messy, tired waves. Proud nose. Strong jaw. A faint halo of moonlight brushed his silhouette through the window, radiant like a saint in a fresco. Dressed in dark trousers, a half-unbuttoned shirt, and a red jacket hanging open, he was not tall, strong but slender. Eyes blue and merciless as the sea.

Eyes that locked on Grantaire's as if magnetized.

Grantaire, thunderstruck, stared back at Enjolras.

How—

He did not know what to ask, even of himself.

Enjolras, the marble monument of the Café Musain, the latter-day Jacobin with his cruel morality and cold logic. Enjolras, golden-haired Enjolras, Olympian Enjolras.

Enjolras, a jaded prostitute in a Pigalle brothel.

The night was not young; midnight had already come and gone. Had he led a client upstairs earlier that night, locked the door behind them, begun to…

Grantaire would  _not_ think about that.

Lefevre followed Grantaire's gaze and chuckled, pacing toward Enjolras. "You're a man of taste, Monsieur," he said, with the uncomfortable heartiness of an unwelcome joke. "Taste and luck. A rare night when my golden boy's free for the taking."

Enjolras said nothing. He remained leaning against the window, arms folded, as dispassionate as a human being could be. Only a faint twitch of his jaw betrayed how fiercely he worked to remain silent.

The smart thing to do, Grantaire knew full well, was request another evening with Sébastian and never speak of this to anyone. Perhaps it was the brandy. Perhaps it was his own horror. But whatever the reason, _the smart thing to do_ factored nowhere into his plans.

"Your Apollo, there," he said, nodding toward Enjolras, ignoring his flinch. "How much to book the rest of his evening?"

Nothing moved, not even time. Nothing but Enjolras' eyes, silently, fractionally widening. Grantaire didn't turn away. Their gaze had become a duel, each waiting for the other to flinch.

"Eight francs fifteen," Lefevre said.

Grantaire wanted to curse Lefevre to hell and back, that Enjolras' time wasn't worth more. Instead, he pressed a handful of coins into Lefevre's palm.

"There's ten. See we are not disturbed."

Enjolras' expression didn't change, exactly. It simply vanished. Grantaire might have been a stranger blown in from the Rue Lepic, or a particularly uninspiring set of curtains.

"Well, boy," Lefevre said to Enjolras. "You heard the gentleman."

Neither Enjolras nor Grantaire moved. They stared, silent, shock nailing their feet to the floor.

Lefevre sighed, as if suffering some colossal wrong.

"Well," he said.

And he struck Enjolras across the cheek with the back of his hand.

Hard.

Enjolras' gasp cut through the suddenly grave-still parlor. He closed his eyes briefly, head turning with the blow, but made no sound beyond that sharp, ragged gasp. The color rising in his face was, Grantaire thought, only half from Lefevre's hand.

"If you did what you're told, whore, it wouldn't hurt," Lefevre snapped. He gripped Enjolras by the upper arm and dragged him sharply away from the window.

Enjolras' breath snagged again. He stumbled.

Grantaire's hands twitched into fists. It reminded him of the way his father had taken the family dog by the scruff and kicked it into the hall. Dealing with a piece of living property that had gotten in the way.

Never before had he been so sorely tempted to kill a man.

Enjolras regained his balance with an aggressive jerk of his shoulders. Drew his fragmented dignity around him like a hawk settling its feathers. His expression had disappeared again.

"Our most private room is downstairs, monsieur," Lefevre said, unruffled. "And don't let this ruin your first impression. He's perfectly obedient with clients."

Grantaire's expression could have been read any number of ways. "Not to be disturbed, I said. Remember."

Enjolras, blank as an empty pistol, said nothing. He led Grantaire through the door and down a narrow flight of stairs, lit only by moonlight. Grantaire, longing to speak, followed in silence. Enjolras' rigid posture had the pride of a man walking to the guillotine.

At the bottom of the stairs, Enjolras paused at the first door to the right. With a jerk of his wrist and a well-placed shoulder, he forced open the sticking door.

No grander than the upstairs rooms Grantaire knew well, though more private. A double bed, clean enough for the price. Two chairs. A half-window, almost at street level. The silver moonlight puddling through gave Enjolras the look of an apparition, some half-human creature emerging from the depths of the sea. But as he lit the lamp, a warm artificial light flooded the room, shattering the magic. Enjolras was mortal again. Earthly. Human.

Enjolras sat on the end of the bed. Grantaire, demurely, took one of the chairs, trying not to look at the handprint glowing faintly red across Enjolras' cheek. Trying hard not to think about mattresses, and what they were used for, usually.

"So," Enjolras said, in a voice that in no way resembled his own. "Ten francs. You'll want something special for that."

Grantaire's blush was colossal. "Christ, Michel, is that what you think of me?"

Enjolras flinched at the sound of his Christian name. "I don't know what to think of you," he said. "It seems you're full of surprises."

He sat with his legs apart, hands clasped between his knees. How many times had Grantaire seen him sit that way in a law practicum, preparing an argument that would chill his peers and spellbind his professors? Or in the Café Musain, absorbing and redirecting the flow of revolutionary conversation? Enjolras the pure, the saint, the center of gravity. Enjolras, who'd been working nights in a Pigalle brothel for God knew how long, and who made Grantaire feel like the sinner for having found out.

Fine marble, indeed.

"I thought, your father—" Grantaire began, grasping toward the question.

Why, with a father investing an inherited fortune in Lyonnais factories, with a mother who once kissed the hand of Joséphine de Beauharnais herself, why would Enjolras work for eight francs a night in a place like this?

"My father wrote me off three years ago," Enjolras interrupted. "You think I'd ask a Grenoble royalist for money? He wouldn't send it if I did."

Enjolras was as temperamentally incapable of accepting help as he was of flying to the moon. Grantaire knew this. But he could not dismiss the memory of Lefevre's hold on Enjolras' arm. The sword-brandishing Spartan of the Sorbonne, reduced to an object that could be picked up and moved. That slap, and the yelp of pain, echoing.

Memories shifted, blended. Two weeks ago, when he and Enjolras had cut through the Boulevard Saint-Jacques on the way to a lecture. Enjolras' tight jaw and lengthened stride as an old woman with missing teeth reached after him, while Grantaire stooped down to hand her a sou. Hypocrisy, Grantaire had thought then. One of those rich boys who claimed to fight for the poor, but would sooner die than touch them.

Fear, Grantaire knew now. Of being found out. Exposed, as one of them.

He didn't have a sou to lend. He didn't have a sou to  _eat._

This fight was idealogical for him, yes. Born in books, in lecture halls, in the back rooms of cafés and the corner tables of wineshops.

It was also personal.

Enjolras worked every day for a revolution because he believed in it, and because he had to.

Enjolras bordered on the edge of a facial expression as he swept a hand backward through his hair. "I know what you think, Grantaire," he said. "But there's no shame in this."

Heart loud in his ears, Grantaire cracked the knuckles of his left hand, then his right. "You mean, you refuse to be ashamed."

"Yes," Enjolras replied. "Shame is unproductive. I don't have time for that."

The Enjolras of the Sorbonne never permitted Grantaire to question his decisions; nor did Enjolras of the Café Musain. Though Grantaire had not yet taken the measure of this new incarnation, Enjolras of the Rue Lepic, he expected no different. But the sourness in his stomach forced him to ask.

"Why didn't you tell us?"

He didn't ask, _Why didn't you tell me_? That response was obvious.

Enjolras laughed. It sounded like he'd never laughed in his life. Like he'd heard a man do it once onstage and adopted it as an affectation, as a thing other people did. He stood and paced toward the window, the crimson of his jacket catching both the lamplight and the glow of the moon.

"Tell you what? It's a job. I work to afford Paris. The Sorbonne. So I can stay here, and fight. Nothing matters but the fight. Not that you would understand, what it means to sacrifice for something."

Enjolras had always been cruel, even without knowing it. Had reason to be defensively cruel now. But in that moment, Grantaire wasn't interested in understanding. He stood, voice rising half a notch louder than Enjolras' had.

"You're a whore, Enjolras. You're letting strangers fuck you for two francs an hour. That matters."

Enjolras stood rigid, as if Grantaire had slapped him clean across the face.

Slowly, he took a long breath in. A strange look overtook his face with the exhale. If Grantaire hadn't known better, he'd have thought Enjolras was about to cry.

Impossible. Enjolras had never felt an emotion in his life.

When Enjolras spoke, his voice was perfectly level. "Maybe to you it does."

In the two years they'd known one another, Grantaire had never heard Enjolras admit himself in error, ever, on any subject. This was the closest Grantaire had ever heard him come. It made him seem younger.

No, Grantaire corrected. It made him sound his age.

Grantaire, at twenty-six, was four years older than Enjolras. For the first time, he felt it.

The desire flooded him again, the yearning to take Enjolras in his arms, rest that beautiful golden head against his shoulder. His palms itched with wanting it, throat full of words he would not say, and he wanted, God he wanted, to tell him, to hold him, to _help_ —

But he couldn't do any of that.

For now, he sat quietly on the end of the bed, reaching out a hand as Enjolras sat beside him. Enjolras twitched back from the touch. Grantaire, mortified, tucked his hands under his own thighs.

"The revolution will wait," he said, feeling Enjolras bristle immediately. "You can fight other ways, other places. Cheaper places. You can—"

"I won't."

Enjolras had begun to pace, catlike strides subdividing the room. Grantaire thought of a trip to the royal menagerie he'd made with his mother, once, when he was small. The tiger, sinewed muscles taut beneath its slashed coat, had looked then as Enjolras looked now, murderous power moving with captivating, terrible grace. It seemed, to Grantaire, the most beautiful thing he had ever seen, and the most tragic.

"If this is the price," Enjolras said, "then I'll pay it. A hundred times over, I'll pay it."

Grantaire waited until the incandescence of Enjolras' rage spent itself on the floor. Then, softly, he spoke.

"You can be as much like Saint-Just as you want, my friend. But they guillotined him, too."

Enjolras' mouth twitched into a faint smile. Though that hadn't been Grantaire's intent, he didn't mind.

"Let them hold up my head as a trophy, then," he said lightly.

"They might," Grantaire consented. "It's worth looking at."

In the breath that followed, the bells from Sacre-Coeur, up the hill in Montmartre, tolled half past, whispering a muffled ring through the window. Abruptly recalling the existence of time, Grantaire thought back to the morning, when he'd stumbled blearily into the Musain at a quarter past nine. Enjolras had already been there, deep in conference with Combeferre, at least three hours' worth of writing surrounding him.

Dear God. When did the man sleep?

"Are you tired?" Grantaire asked. Afraid, despite himself, of Enjolras' brewing disdain for such a question.

But something within Enjolras gave. His oceanic eyes softened, his posture scaled back. His guard was not down, never that, but it slouched slightly.

"Yes," he said. "My God. I've never been so tired in my life."

It was the single most intimate thing Enjolras had ever said to him.

Grantaire wanted to weep—no, he wanted his sketchbook. No worthier subject of art than Enjolras in that moment. Saint-Just, the revolution's icy Angel of Death, dressed for war in red. A breath of feeling slipping through a crack in the marble.

He stood, leaving the bed empty, and smiled. "You ought to sleep. I'll wake you at sunrise."

Enjolras blinked, as though Grantaire were speaking Chinese. For an awful moment, Grantaire feared he'd overstepped.

"If he finds out, he'll—" Enjolras began.

Grantaire interrupted him, for the first time that night, for the first time ever. "Then I'll stay. If I'm here, Lefevre will think you...well. He won't suspect anything."

The look in Enjolras' eyes was complicated. Resentment, anger, and a begrudging gratitude—none stronger than the other, and none reassuring.

But at last, he nodded. Wordlessly, he slipped out of his jacket, the lean muscles of his arms and Roman chest enough to make Grantaire's breath catch. The tease was almost unbearable, the insinuation of the taut, lean body beneath. A body that God knew how many other men had touched, but one Grantaire considered with tenderness bordering on reverence, one it should have been death to defile.

Enjolras must have suspected Grantaire's train of thought, must have seen where Grantaire's eyes were wandering, but he didn't acknowledge it. He hesitated on the edge of speech. A hesitation Grantaire had never seen before. A pause he had no idea what to do with.

"You won't tell them what you know."

It wasn't a question, but Grantaire nodded anyway. "Not a word," he said. "Sleep. You need it."

As Grantaire settled into his abandoned chair, Enjolras doused the lamp, then snaked beneath the blanket. Grantaire heard his small sigh in the dark, though the moonlight revealed little more than shadows. Gradations of light and dark. Save for Enjolras' jacket, which shone like a battle flag dangling from the bedpost.

"Thank you, R," Enjolras said.

Grantaire froze. In two years, Enjolras had never once used his nickname. Always called him Grantaire, formally, coldly, as if from a great distance. It sounded every inch as sweet as he'd dreamed. He said nothing, knowing the unlovely sound of his own voice would break the spell, sending the filaments of this magic flying to the window, through the door, into the night.

Within minutes, Enjolras' breathing smoothed, became steady. He must have been dead on his feet, Grantaire thought, to sleep so quickly.

Eyes adjusting to the moonlight, he could see Enjolras nestled on his side, one arm curled upward and tucked beneath the pillow. His golden hair haloing around him, the smoothness of his marble brow, his eyelashes—so delicate, how had Grantaire not noticed them before—flickering slightly with a dream. Perhaps it was a trick of the moonlight, perhaps rather it was the drink catching up with his brain, but as Grantaire watched Enjolras sleep, he thought again of the young Saint-Just, untouchable and fanatical-handsome, on the night before his execution.

Grantaire didn't mean to sleep. But the brandy caught him quickly, and within an hour he dozed, troubled by dreams of faceless hands and the _ching_ of a blade falling from five feet above.

When he woke, the first rays of sunlight streamed into the room. His neck and back grumbled from five hours asleep in an old wooden chair.

The bed had been neatly made, sheets pulled into place with military precision.

There was no sign of Enjolras.

#

Forty-five minutes later, Grantaire stumbled up the Rue Saint-Michel and into the Musain. Louison glanced up, plainly as surprised to see Grantaire before eight in the morning as Grantaire himself was to be there at such an hour.

"They're in back," Louison said, pointing, as if Grantaire might have forgotten the way between now and the day previous. "Are they expecting you?"

"Mademoiselle," he said, with an extravagant bow, "I defy expectation."

He sauntered through the café, along the back hall, down half a flight of stairs, and into the room at the rear of the Café Musain.

A smaller group than in the evenings, when revolutionary zeal drew the full crowd. This morning, Feuilly and Prouvaire compared notes for an upcoming examination on Ovid's _Metamorphosis._ Bossuet and Courfeyrac waxed elegiac on the subject of Marius' latest romantic entanglement—somehow an eternal topic of conversation by a handful of the Amis.

In the west corner, two young men sat near the window, conferring in low tones over pages of minute handwriting. Combeferre, dark-eyed and pale, held a notebook in one hand, pointing midway down the page, voicing a question.

And Enjolras, in his element, sat perched on the windowsill, back against the glass.

Somehow he had contrived to wash, dress, and see to his hair since the night before. He looked as if he'd spent the night in the finest hotel in Paris. Gone was his Pigalle stoicism; the Quartier coaxed out the transcendent enthusiasm of the revolutionary. He spoke too quietly for Grantaire to hear. But his animation spread, filling the early morning light.

His was a profile meant to be viewed at sunrise, Grantaire thought, standing quietly at the door. Moonlight made Enjolras ethereal; daylight made him triumphant.

The faint remains of a handprint could be seen on Enjolras' cheek. But as he turned his head to consider the page, the light shifted, and it was gone.

"Grantaire?" Courfeyrac said, frowning at him. "Awake this early? The world must be ending."

Enjolras' eyes flicked up from the notebook like a soldier sighting his rifle. Grantaire looked back, unable not to. Those Mediterranean eyes kept Grantaire paralyzed, threatening to shoot at a wrong movement.

Eyes that seemed to whisper _Go on. Say it. I dare you._

Two seconds passed before Grantaire looked away and gave a laugh that did not sound as forced as it felt.

"Out late, not up early," he said, sprawling across the seat between Courfeyrac and Bossuet. "Let me tell you, _mes petites,_ until you've experienced the magic of Montmartre in the witching hour, you haven't lived."

"And what did you do last night, Monsieur Don Juan, Monsieur Casanova?" teased Bossuet. "With a face like yours, I'd think you'd have more women fighting for your bed than you could manage. If they could get past the stench."

Justice was blind, they said, but the Saint-Just eyes of Enjolras bored directly through Grantaire.

_You won't tell them what you know._

"What did I do?" Grantaire said, grinning. "Last night I took a journey to heaven. I danced among the stars, drank the tears of the gods, went three rounds in the ring with the man in the moon. What did I do? Sweet God, my good man, ask me rather, what didn't I do?"

He felt Enjolras turn away, back to Combeferre, to whatever speech they were drafting together that morning. Grantaire allowed the wave of conversation to bear him along, careless of where he ended up. None of it meant anything—had never meant anything, not to him, but meant less than nothing now.

What revolution was worth this? What man would enslave himself for the whisper of freedom he might not even see?

Only a man like Enjolras.

And, of course, there were no men like Enjolras.

#

The sun had risen high above the Rue Saint-Michel. By the moderately reliable hands of Feuilly's watch, it was ten to eleven. Enjolras, closing his notebook, said something about a lecture beginning at five after, and as he rose to his feet, the rest instinctively began to gather their belongings and think of other destinations. They scattered into the quartier like untethered planets, a solar system whose sun had disappeared.

Grantaire, grudgingly prodded into motion by the law of averages, found himself in step with Combeferre as they emerged, squinting, into the sunlight of the Rue des Grès. Grantaire tucked his hands into his pockets and whistled an irritatingly jaunty tune, the melody of which he had lifted from Gavroche, that young boy who hung on Courfeyfac's coattails.

Combeferre waited until they had turned into the Boulevard Saint-Germain, away from the Panthéon, before venturing to speak.

"R, can I ask you something?"

Grantaire smirked. "Since you followed me a five-minutes' walk out of your way, I'd be surprised if you didn't."

Combeferre had all the traits of a man with an impolite question to ask, and who had decided to dispense with tact to get the asking done quickly.

"Is something wrong with Enjolras?"

Grantaire flushed, and hated himself for doing so. "Why?"

"You saw how he was this morning. Tense."

Grantaire raised a single eyebrow.

"Tenser than usual," Combeferre amended. "And he looked at you like you knew something."

"Me?" Grantaire examined the patrons of a nearby café rather than meet Combeferre's eye. "I know nothing. Never have. That's what makes me so charming."

"Grantaire," Combeferre pressed, "he'd sooner die than tell me. You'll have to."

Grantaire paused. He bowed his head, looking at the stones of the Boulevard Saint-Germain, seeing instead another street, another house, another face.

"Grantaire?"

He took a long breath.

_You won't tell them what you know._

"Well," he began.

#

At first, it was easy enough for Enjolras to ignore.

Courfeyrac picking up the bill for their weekly dinner at the Corinthe, well, so what? He'd helped Courfeyrac practice for their oral exams in criminal law the week before, and his friends were generous to a fault. A kindness he'd have refused under other circumstances, but one he'd grudgingly accept under his current ones—though under no circumstances would he encourage it.

The look on Louison's face when she told him his ever-mounting tab at the Musain had been cleared was harder to dismiss, but again he told himself it was nothing. Again, he had generous friends.

Marius, he decided. Struck by yet another _coup de foudre_ , this time a well-off young gentlewoman in Rue Plumet. Surely it was Marius, paying off the debts of half the café's regulars on a combination of high spirits and sudden fortune. Enjolras had thanked Louison and left into the Rue Saint-Michel, the faint pinpricks of discomfort not quite leaving his brain.

Combeferre, however, was impossible to ignore.

Monday evening, just before sunset. The awkward evening hours Enjolras loathed: not late enough to migrate to the Musain without attracting attention, but too late to retreat to the library, which shuttered its doors at four. He supposed he could return to the boarding-house, where he shared a dirty, ten-sous room with three men and more roaches than he cared to count. But any other option was preferable.

Instead, he retreated as usual to a familiar haunt, a willow in the Jardin du Luxembourg, in a small corner nearest the Rue d'Assas. The willow's fingerlike leaves provided quiet privacy while allowing enough light to read by. In cold or rain, the hours between four and seven were torturous; now, in early March, at last turning the corner into spring, it was tolerable.

Leaning his back against the willow, Enjolras opened his well-worn copy of Rousseau, which fell open naturally to a heavily annotated page two-thirds through the book. The author's words were barely legible beneath Enjolras' copious marginalia, but that didn't matter; he could have recited the book from memory.

Losing himself in the familiar rhythm of the words, Enjolras didn't notice Combeferre's approach until he dropped down beside him beneath the willow, startling Enjolras as badly as if the garden itself had burst into flames. Other than a pronounced start, Enjolras preserved his composure, and carefully marked his place before looking up.

"Jean-Jacques again?" Combeferre teased. "Remind me when your birthday is? I'll buy you a new book for a damn change."

Enjolras ignored this. "Did you follow me here?" he asked.

Combeferre smiled, as if to say _you aren't as subtle as you think._ "No need. You're a man of startlingly regular habits. Easy to find."

Too easy, evidently.

"Why did you want to find me?" he asked.

Combeferre reached down and picked up a fallen willow switch, which he began unconsciously to shred between his fingers. Enjolras watched the delicate leaves flicker to the earth, feeling his own mistrust rise with each shred of green. If Combeferre would rather look at a twig than meet his eye, this was a conversation he'd rather not have.

"I told you I'm looking for a new apartment," Combeferre said, in a voice studiously wiped clean of intention. "Something closer to the quartier."

"You mentioned it," Enjolras agreed, warily indulging him.

Combeferre nodded. "But the rents here are, well. You know."

"Housing discrimination," Enjolras said. "Oppression and exploitation of the populace."

"Exactly," Combeferre said. He stared at the willow switch as though he'd never seen anything so philosophically fascinating in his life. "So I was wondering, when your lease runs out, if you'd want to room with me. To fight the exploitation of the populace."

Enjolras stared.

That did it.

This wasn't unprompted kindness. This wasn't generosity for its own sake. He thought of Grantaire's dark eyes, wide as five-franc pieces, staring at him from across M. Lefevre's parlor, and felt a sudden and urgent need to strangle something. He settled for interlacing his hands around his knees, gripping them so tightly his knuckles ached.

"What did Grantaire tell you?"

"Enjolras, don't be angry," Combeferre said to the willow switch.

"I'm not angry," Enjolras said, continuing to throttle his own knees. "Tell me what he told you."

Combeferre sighed and pushed his dark hair off his forehead. There it was, as Enjolras knew it would be: the pity. The choking, condescending pity he'd never asked for and didn't want. The next time he saw Grantaire, he'd kill the drunken fool for betraying a secret he'd sworn to keep.

"He told us…" Combeferre began.

 _Us._  There was an _us._ That explained Courfeyrac. That explained Marius.

"He told us about your father."

Enjolras' grip on his knees released in shock. "My father," he repeated.

Combeferre plunged ahead, obviously apprehensive. "How your father disowned you because of the revolution, and you're living on almost nothing. That you're too proud to ask for help, although I could have told him that myself."

Grantaire hadn't told them.

"We know you won't take charity," Combeferre was saying; Enjolras had to force himself to listen. "But this isn't charity. I _am_ moving, and I _do_ need a flatmate. If you say no, I have to ask Marius." Combeferre pulled an exaggerated grimace. "Please don't make me ask Marius."

Enjolras laughed. "You make a compelling case."

Yet he was barely listening.

Grantaire promised to keep the secret, and had.

That vulgar, cynical man. Living to drink, to gamble, to sneer at anything worthwhile. Scorning everything, believing in nothing.

Yet Grantaire hadn't told.

"When are you moving?" he asked quietly, forcing himself to meet Combeferre's eyes.

The relief on Combeferre's face was palpable. "The fifteenth," he said. "But if you want to wait…"

"No," Enjolras said. "The fifteenth is fine. I…thank you," he said, with a pronounced effort.

He stood and picked up his book where it had fallen. Combeferre half-rose after him, but Enjolras shook his head.

"I need to find someone," he said. "But I'll see you tonight."

The sun had begun to set; the bells in Saint-Germain-des-Près had just chimed half past six. Slightly too early for the usual Musain crowd, but Enjolras, this evening, didn't mind.

Grantaire, after all, tended to start his drinking early.


End file.
